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#HipHopEd Top 20 Thought Provoking Hip-Hop Songs of 2017

For the past few years we as a #HipHopEd community virtually come together and make suggestions of Hip-Hop songs that were released in the current year that we felt were “thought provoking.” We purposely don’t use terms like “educational” or “positive” because these terms can be extremely subjective and limit the creativity and critical thinking skills that are inherent in every true Hip-Hop Educator. “Thought Provoking” is a term that speaks to the collaborative effort between the musical work and the educator to facilitate a teachable moment and or discussion through the analysis and evaluation of the musical work and the issues brought up through the overall interpretation. We strive to not make this a mere popularity contest or a selection of favorites based on aesthetics that negate the creativity and originality of modern day voices in our culture.

It is our hope that this list will be a provocative one that you will find useful for your listening and continued development as an educator. There are some challenges to the process such as the number of followers an individual making a song selection has and the notoriety or lack thereof of the artist being suggested; but its imperfections still capture the human element that makes the list a living document that may look different if the suggestions were reviewed and agreed upon by a panel of “experts.” We simply counted the number (retweets) and (likes) for song suggestions from 9:00 pm Tuesday 12/19/17 to 3:00 pm Wednesday 12/20/17 EST.

I want to thank one of our #HipHopEd collaborators, Joquetta Johnson for creating the play list once the data was compiled. Follow Joquetta on Twitter @accordin2jo